Heathrow's runway was so HOT during heatwave, airport bosses had to delay resurfacing work

Heathrow's runway was so HOT during heatwave, airport bosses had to delay resurfacing work

TEMPERATURES soared so high during Britain’s sizzling summer heatwave last month that bosses at London’s Heathrow airport were forced to delay the resurfacing of a major runway because it was too hot to lay the asphalt.

The £20m project to resurface Heathrow's southern runway is a complex but crucial operation

Work on the £20million resurfacing project had to be rearranged for two days as the thermometer peaked at 90F (32C) during the day.

However, the airport says everything else has run smoothly in what amounts to a crucial but complex operation for the future of Heathrow.

After a decade of continuous pounding by millions of aircraft taking off and landing, the two runways are undergoing vital refurbishment to ensure they are safe.

And now Express Online has been given a rare insight into an unusual engineering operation at an important cornerstone of Britain’s economy.

Daytime temperatures peaked at 32C during July, and the asphalt would have absorped the heat

So far, 22,000 tonnes of old surface on the southern runway have been removed and replaced in less than four months.

By the end of this phase of the project, more than 80 miles of cabling and 1,000 new LED aeronautical ground lights will have been installed.

These lights help guide the pilots during poor visibility and are fitted within the surface of the runway.

Once their installation is complete, a flight check will be carried out using a small plane that will make a series of landings to ensure all the lights are operating correctly.

The project is akin to resurfacing work on a major motorway.

Because the airport cannot close a runway during the day, all the work, which involves 150 construction staff and 80 heavy-duty items of plant and machinery, must take place during the night - and on one landing strip at a time.

The work began on the southern runway in April, while the northern runway will be resurfaced next year using the same process.

Each working night, more than 1,000 cones are laid out to mark a temporary road system along the length of the runway.

Work starts as soon as the last flight has used the southern runway at about 11pm, and the team then has just seven hours before the next day’s operations begin around 5am.

Workers have a slot of just seven hours to lay new asphalt, cables and lights

But before the day’s first flight, the sections of new runway are inspected for debris and a safety “grip test” is carried out.

The runway is authorised for use only after a nod from a senior duty manager.

Andrew Mitchell, the senior project manager, said: “During the July heatwave, we had to reorganise our schedule as it was too hot for the asphalt to be laid, but with careful contingency planning and well co-ordinated teamwork the pace of the project hasn’t been affected.

“We’ve successfully laid and grooved the new surface and now we’re cracking on with laying the thousands of metres of new cable and connecting hundreds of lights.”